Sealed Deck Analysis: Dan OMS

by Kim Eikefet

Sometimes, a sealed deck just builds itself. You open the pack and you just see instantly what cards you need to put in your deck. More often though, you review the cards, scratch your head and wonder what you can make out of your pile. Either you get too few creatures, too little removal, too few good cards in each colour or cards that would result in a bad mana curve. Still, that's what you've got, and you've got to make the best of it.

Dan OMS (pictured left) is part of Team Antarctica

"I just try to take out the bad cards. And I'm always looking for something cute, I keep my eyes open to cards people don't use, just in case I need a card to fill out the deck," Dan O'Mahoney-Schwartz says.

Those who want to try and make a deck themselves should not scroll any further before they've finished making the deck.

"This time my deck is pretty standard. My deck in Copenhagen was really bad, I played 19 lands, Deadly Insect and double coloured casting costs in every colour. This is simpler, I basically play two colours and an extra card," Dan explains.

"I chose white because I couldn't pair any other two colours together. It was my only colour with eight playable cards, it was just solid," Dan says, flipping through the cards in his deck. "Then I chose black because I have a few removal spells, a Cateran Enforcer and a Cateran Kidnapper. I couldn't resist playing two removal spells - I had to play the good cards."

In addition to white and black, Dan added three blue cards to the mix. The number one strategy of the Americans, Canadian Ryan Fuller and Dutchman Noah Boeken was to build a two-coloured deck, but out of the eight of them, only two managed to reach that goal. "We are just playing the 22 best cards we could. That's not always the best strategy, but we are just maximizing the number of powerful cards while still having consistent creatures, tricks, removal and ways to win. I could have built two colours with green and white, but I would have no removal, no way to get past blockers - a few good tricks, but everything would be on the ground. And I would still have to play a few bad cards."

So instead of playing three of the following "unplayable cards" - Specter's Wail, Bog Glider, Rampart Crawler, Mirror Strike and Stronghold Discipline, Dan chose to play the three good blue cards. "The hard choice was to play the third colour and not playing green. But I couldn't register those cards in my deck, and green wouldn't have done anything, it was just a few creatures and a few tricks. Now I have no bad cards in my deck."